Electrohydrodynamic Couette–Poiseuille Flow Instability of Two Viscous Conducting and Dielectric Fluid Layers Streaming through Brinkman Porous Medium

Abstract

The electrohydrodynamic plane Couette–Poiseuille flow instability of two superposed conducting and dielectric viscous incompressible fluids confined between two rigid horizontal planes under the action of a normal electric field and pressure gradient through Brinkman porous medium has been analytically investigated. The lower plane is stationary, while the upper one is moving with constant velocity. The details of the base state mathematical model and the linearized model equations for the perturbed state are introduced. Following the usual procedure of linear stability analysis for viscous fluids, we derived two non-dimensional modified Orr–Sommerfeld equations and obtained the associated boundary and interfacial conditions suitable for the problem. The eigenvalue problem has been solved using asymptotic analysis for wave numbers in the long-wavelength limit to obtain a very complicated novel dispersion relation for the wave velocity through lengthy calculations. The obtained dispersion equation has been solved using Mathematica software v12.1 to study graphically the effects of various parameters on the stability of the system. It is obvious from the figures that the system in the absence of a porous medium and/or electric field is more unstable than in their presence. It is found also that the velocity of the upper rigid boundary, medium permeability, and Reynolds number have dual roles on the stability on the system, stabilizing as well as destabilizing depending on the viscosity ratio value. The electric potential, dielectric constant and pressure gradient are found to have destabilizing influences on the system, while the porosity of the porous medium, density ratio and Froude number have stabilizing influences. A depth ratio of less than one has a dual role on the stability of the system, while it has a stabilizing influence for values greater than one. It is observed that the viscosity stratification brings about a stabilizing as well as a destabilizing effect on the flow system.